It’s Official. Txtr Has Closed All Its Ebook Stores Except Germany.

When Txtr began the bankruptcy journey there was some hope that the German media giant Saturn would throw its muscle behind the Txtr project and just maybe give it a new lease of life.

It was not to be,

Twenty-three of the twenty-four global Txtr stores are now shuttered, with a warning to readers that as from June 26 there will be no Txtr store. Period.

The only store not carrying the warning is the Txtr.DE store.

Will Txtr be missed?

Not by most indies, as sadly with a handful of exceptions we’ve never bothered to support the store even if, by chance, we had ebooks there. And that is a real shame because Txtr has been one of the most indie-friendly of the smaller retailers and has always been open to promotional deals with authors. The feedback from authors who did engage with Txtr was always positive.

But now Txtr is back to square one with just the one German-language store.

There’s been no mention on the Smashwords blog about the Txtr issue, despite Smashwords being the only US aggregator distributing indie titles to the Txtr stores. It remains to be seen if the Smashwords distribution agreement with Txtr will continue for the one remaining Txtr store.

At this stage its not clear if Kobo is going to step in and absorb the Txtr customer-base. They’ve done that in the past – Sony and Tesco Blinkbox for example – , often with no announcement until the last minute, so it could yet happen.

Regardless, on behalf of the handful of indies who did make the effort to work with Txtr, and enjoyed finding new readers by doing so, we’d like to say thanks to the Txtr international team for trying. You’ll be sorely missed.